Network Analysis of a Large Sample of Typical and Late Talkers

Eva Jimenez, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Thomas Hills, University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to examine differences in semantic
network structure of late talkers and typical talkers to elucidate potential
learning strategies used by late talking children. To address this question, we
conducted network analysis on the vocabularies of 2,912 children, with 566 of
those being late talkers. Contrary to previously reported findings, the results
show that late talkers have well-connected vocabularies as measured by median
degree, clustering coefficient, and mean distance, with more well-connected
networks in some cases than typical talkers. Further analysis of word order
suggests that late talkers may be selecting based on frequency and connectivity
of the words in the learning environment, more so than typical talkers. The
language processing difficulties in late talkers appear not to be associated with
their semantic network properties. In sum, late talkers may initially benefit
from using word frequency and word connectivity strategies to build
well-connected vocabularies.